The top landscape prize at this year's Philadelphia Flower Show, not surprisingly, went to Leon Kluge Garden Design of South Africa. His firm's interpretation of the 2015 theme -- The Movies -- focused on the film "Maleficient." The movie featured Angelina Jolie in the starring role -- and Kluge used Picea abies 'Pendula Major' to represent the fairy queen.

And the wooden stairway shown here takes you up to the top part of the garden design, described in the post that I put up yesterday. An inspired design, with inspired plants for a well-deserved best in show award.

Among the "gold" winners in the landscape category was Paul Hervey-Brookes & Associates of the United Kingdeom. I'm unfamiliar with the movie, "The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe," but I certainly liked the winter scene, so appropriate for the east coast this year. Thankfully, it hasn't been snowing in Philly, but it sure is cold, so the winter scene is in keeping with the weather.

Flip to the other side of the landscape design and there's a classic English spring garden with clipped hedges, a nice lawn, and lots of herbacious perennials, not to mention the little English country house.

Another gold went to Stoney Bank Nurseries for "Chinese Blossoms." This view through the moon gate shows the Asian-style bridge in the background, over a lovely pond. This landscape was filled with Asian-origin plants, including magnolias, Japanese cedars, peonies, gingkos, and Japanese maples.

I can't list all the winners ... but go to the show and see them yourself! Always a great way to bring in spring.

It's all lights and action at this year's Philadelphia Flower Show, the oldest and biggest in the USA. Take the red carpet through the Art Deco theater entry, surrounded by roses named after Hollywood stars (Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor, Henry Fonda, Barbra Streisand), plus 1500 calla lilies, 1400 ferns, as well as hostas, pentas, geraniums, anemones, reiger begonias and more.

Visitors, of course, are most fascinated by the plants, and one of this year's big attractions is the crimson bottlebrush (Callistemon citrinus) in the exhibit by Jim Fogarty Design of Victoria, Australia. The landscape is inspired by the movie "The Rescuers Down Under," and it illustrates a secret hideout in the bush, with many Australian plants, including tree ferns, eucalyptus, and kangaroo paws as well as that bottlebrush tree. By the way, the bottlebrush is a drought tolerant tree with smallish green leaves and the those spectacular blooms -- it's hardy in the US zones 9-11 and grows to about 25 x 25 feet.

More familiar is the movie "Maleficient," and Leon Kluge Garden Design of South Africa managed to transform a few Picea abies 'Pendula Major' into yes, a close Angelina Jolie. There's also a mystical pond and a wooden stairway that leads to an enclosure overlooking a gorgeous valley. Lots of foxgloves and astilbes help carry out the theme.

The show opens to the public at 11AM February 28th (Saturday) and runs through Sunday, March 8th.

As I'm staring out at mountains of snow, it's hard to believe that anything is actually going to emerge from the ground. But there is always hope, and when I think of edible gardening, I always think of an acquaintance who grows more than enough to feed a family of four in moveable containers on her deck.

Dreaming about those baskets hanging from your front porch? Apparently, there's no relief from the cold weather in the northeast through the end of this month, so head to the New York Botanical Garden for a great preview of spring.

The orchid show this year is "Chandeliers," and the garden's Victorian-style glasshouse will be filled with hanging baskets and cylinders overflowing with almost every kind of orchid imaginable.

For the first time, the garden's orchid display will run throughout the Conservatory and on into the other galleries in the glass house. The exhibition will explain the history and conservation efforts concerning rare and endangered orchids, and there will also be many tips for visitors on ways to display orchids in creative ways.

Orchids represent the largest family of flowering plants, with more than 30 thousand naturally occurring species. How about that! They grow in almost all conditions, from semi-desert to Arctic tundra, and they are found on every continent except Antarctica.

The show opens on February 28th and runs through April 19th. And check out the many special classes and demonstrations that are running in conjunction with the exhibition.

Lights, the Red Carpet, even celebrities ... it's all there at this year's Philadelphia Flower Show, "Celebrate the Movies."

The Rose Garden will feature roses named after stars of the screen, including Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Henry Fonda and Barbra Streisand.

Exhibits by professional floral and landscape designers this year are inspired by Disney and Disney-Pixar films, so there will be floral interpretations of Pirates of the Caribbean, Cars, Into the Woods, Maleficient, Peter Pan, and Frozen, just to mention a few.

Special guest this year include Dan Aykroyd, who will sign bottles of his Crystal Head Vodka, and Ethan Wayne, the son of John Wayne, who will sign bottles of Duke bourbon and display some of his father's memorabilia.

Great way to get out ahead of this year's winter blues, see the latest in horticultural trends, and spot a lot of plants that you'll encounter for the first time.

The flower show opens to the public Saturday February 28th at 11AM and runs through March 8th.

The book is edited by Charles Beveridge, Lauren Meier and Irene Mills, who are also editors of Olmsted's papers.

The focus of the book is Olmsted's park plans, and as the editors point out in the introduction, his view of a park's special feature was "an expanse of space large enough to remove the visitor from the sights and sounds of the city and by its indefiniteness of edge to create the illusion of greater space than it in fact possessed."

You'll find the familiar in this book: New York City's Central and Morningside Parks, projects in Boston, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Chicago, California. You'll also find the unfamiliar: proposed parks in Newark and Albany and a public recreation ground in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

You might not know that The Long Meadow, in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, which extends for a mile from the main park entrance, is what the editors call "the fullest realization of the 'pastoral' style of landscape in any of Olmsted’s parks." You'll love the detailed planting plan for Long Meadow, and it would be more than interesting to go there today and see how many of the trees still survive.

You'll also enjoy the construction details throughout the book, plans for the drainage system in Central Park, and many other elements.

This is a large format book to accommodate the drawings -- and there are nearly 500 images in all, many of them in full color. Anyone interested in the fields of landscape design would surely want this book as a reference or simply as a celebration of the first and foremost American landscape architect.

The book will be published in April, but it is now available for pre-order through Amazon.

For President's Day, you have a couple of choices. Mr. Lincoln won the All-America Rose Selection top prize in 1965 (Conard Pyle) and many in the industry still consider it the best red rose ever developed.

It's a hybrid tea with a strong damask scent and dark red flowers on long stems. It has an upright habit and the blooms are long lasting.

Zones 5-9.

If red is not your favorite color, you could opt for the pure white hybrid tea John F. Kennedy.

It has a strong, fruity fragrance, does fine in hot weather, and has a classic form.

Last summer, on a garden tour in Boston's South End, I was entranced by the story of four families who years ago took down the fences separating their back townhouse gardens. This photo was taken from the first garden, looking across to the other three.

This small garden has a tiny dining patio up near the house, and the rest of the garden has a circular design filled with perennials: primroses, irises, astilbes, peonies. In the center is an Englilsh chimney pot that serves as a planter.

On the opposite wall (not seen here), lilacs and a mature peach tree flank the gate.

Adjoining the previous garden, this space is anchored in winter by evergreen azaleas and hollies. A pair of redbud trees are on either side of the back entrance (from the alley), and the back fence features clematis and English ivy. On the ground plane, a combination of golden creeping jenny, sweet woodruff, creeping veronica and marsh marigolds edge the cobblestone border. The homeowners engaged Mark Corbin of South End Gardens to help them with the design.

Next in line is one of the deepest gardens, with built-in bluestone benches that double as raised walls for containers. In spring, the garden is filled with tulips, but later on, the beds are filled with astilbe, bellflowers, petunias, Japanese iris, hydrangeas, and Japanese forest grass.

Climbing roses are trained against the house, and it's a lovely, serene garden "room" extending from the main residence.

The final garden, seen here in a photo taken from the house, shows the sunken patio and the raised beds out toward the back gate. Lovely shrubs include daphne and deutzia, hydrangeas and peonies. There is a fence at this end of the gardens, and it's covered with a climbing hydrangea and with a similar vine, Schizophragma hydrangeoides 'Moonlight.' At the top left of this photo, note the umbrella-shaped weeping birch at the previous garden's entry.

These gardens are also cleverly designed so that dining areas are pretty much screened from neighbors -- but you can still enjoy the grand vista that all four gardens provide.